Indian Country funds to stay with the Bureau for a while longer
The B1A won't be getting out of the Indian money-managing business as quickly as it had hoped.
Thanks to Tribal efforts that successfully enlisted the aid of several key congressmen and senators, Ross Swimmer's Mellon Bank plan has been put on hold for at least a month.
Swimmer, who's the assistant Interior Dept. secretary for Indian affairs, proposes to turn over some $1.7 billion of trust funds to the
management of the Mellon Bank of Pittsburgh, Penn. He said the BIA wasn't able to provide adequate "internal controls" over the money, so he wanted to contract out the management of the Indian investment program.
The Salish and Kootenai Tribes, among others, protested the proposal for a number of reasons.
All of the nation's tribes had been excluded from the planning and development of the proposed contract, for example, even though it's Indian money, not the BIA's, that's involved. Area and agency BIA offices are also "grossly uninformed" about the details, notes a Feb. 2 letter sent to Swimmer.
A second concern was that putting all the tribes' money into a mutual
fund would give the individual tribes little or no control over the investments or their interest income.
Interest income has already been lost due to some funds being placed in special "overnighter" accounts paying reduced rates, pending transfer to the Mellon Bank.
Another issue was the actual cost of the contract. That's an unknown right now, as is the effect of the policy change on money held in trust by the federal government for individual Indians (money in "IIM" accounts).
"We first heard of the Mellon Bank proposal from the Interior Dept. just before Christmas," Tribal Chairman Mickey Pablo said. "Transfer of both Tribal and individual trust funds was to begin taking place Feb. 2. Our (Concludes on page two)
New federal funding available for substance abuse intervention, prevention
There's good news and bad news on the anti-substance abuse front.
The good news is that Congress has agreed to loosen up on $1.7 billion to fight alcohol and drug abuse in America. Some $44.2 million has been set aside to benefit Indian reservations specifically.
The bad news is that although the money seems assured, no regulations have been written to govern its use. And, although President Reagan expressed a committment to the issue
last fall when the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 (PL 99-570) was being passed by Congress in October -- "the fastest fad to hit Congress in a long time," in the words of Kevin Howlett (Tribal Health Dept.) - he's since proposed drastic cuts in the effort's budget for 1988.
Howlett's remarks were made Jan. 30 to a group of people who met in Pablo to get ideas for a "Tribal action plan" that will use the new money for (Continues on page two)